IOS Archives - The Silicon Underground

Droidpocalypse? Josh Drake says no.

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 11:00:34 +0000

Josh Drake, the researcher who discovered the Stagefright vulnerability in Android that lets an attacker hack into an Android device by sending a specially crafted picture or video in a text message, was on the Risky Business security podcast this week to

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Expect a rough road ahead for Flash

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 11:00:05 +0000

Adobe has patched Flash twice in two weeks now. The reason for this was due to Hacking Team, an Italian company that sells hacking tools to government agencies, getting hacked. Hacking Team, it turns out, knew of at least three

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Cringely takes on Ashton Kutcher’s movie about Steve Jobs

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 11:00:29 +0000

Mark Stephens, a.k.a. Robert X. Cringely, wrote last week about his disappointment in Ashton Kutcher’s movie Jobs, about the late Apple co-founder and CEO. Here’s the most important part of his quasi-review: [S]omething happened during Steve’s NeXT years (which occupy

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This week in mobile

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:00:01 +0000

I have zero intention of doing a mobile roundup every week, but it sure seems like there were a few noteworthy developments in the mobile field this week that are worth mentioning. So, here goes. Microsoft releases Office for Apple

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Where Microsoft lost its way

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0000

John C. Dvorak wrote an analysis of how Microsoft lost its way with Windows 8 this week. All in all it sounds reasonable to me. His recollection of DOS and some DOS version 8 confused me at first, but that

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UEFI on ARM illustrates why we still have to watch Microsoft

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:34:22 +0000

UEFI is a technology that forces a computer to only load a digitally signed operating system. This has some security benefits, as it makes parts of the operating system unbootable if they become infected, since the viruses won’t be digitally

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Microsoft: No x86 apps for ARM

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:10:20 +0000

So, The Register reports that Windows on ARM will not have compatibility with apps compiled for x86. Intel has been saying this for a while, while Microsoft has been mum. So now we know. There are arguments both for and

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Microsoft sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses; what does it mean?

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 11:00:32 +0000

Steve Ballmer announced today that Microsoft has sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses, but anywhere from half to two-thirds of PCs are still running Windows XP and need to get with the program. He also continues to insist Windows 8

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So why are Apple and Google (and Microsoft) tracking us?

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:50:46 +0000

So what are Google and Apple doing with this location data? And Microsoft, now that it’s clear they’re gathering it too (but they claim they aren’t storing it anywhere on the phone). They aren’t saying a lot, but they’ve said

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